An alarmist article in the Guardian (8 July) suggested that nurseries were taking in two-year-olds and churning out anti-social, aggressive children. The Government, the newspaper claimed, was poised for a rethink. Four days later Chancellor Gordon Brown demolished that notion in his spending review and announced plans to extend pilots for nursery education to 12,000 two-year-olds in 500 areas.
The anger over the Guardian's selective use of research has been matched by the warm response from early years practitioners, at least in general terms, to proposals to integrate childcare and education, extend nursery education and develop quality, affordable childcare for all families by 2015.
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